


Untouched By The Hands of Man

by YesBothWays



Series: Xena and Gabrielle Forever [7]
Category: Xena: Warrior Princess
Genre: F/F, Femslash, OTP Feels, ship sex, the sea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:35:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4114099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YesBothWays/pseuds/YesBothWays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A post "Who's Gurkahn?" fic.  Basically just beautiful sex and a huge amount of feelings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untouched By The Hands of Man

            Gabrielle's seasickness began to settle in on her after midday passed. She started to lean into the rails and grew distracted. Xena went to make her a tea. She mixed together the proper herbs this time. The drink would still make her fall asleep, but not nearly for so long as before. When she awoke she would no longer feel ill, unless they came on truly rough waves.

            "Are we in the clear?" Gabrielle asked, as Xena offered her the tea. She knew the answer already. Perhaps her faith in Xena had sustained a blow, because she looked closely at her expression as she answered.

            "Yes," Xena said. She gave a flicker of a smile to hide the faint feeling of shame that moved through her chest and stuck in her throat a moment. It was not a question that would have been asked before this ordeal.

            Xena would have let Gabrielle remain awake, no matter how much she suffered, if any enemies might come upon them. You never gave up your best warrior in a fight. The evening was drawing near, and the day had remained clear and the vantage in their favor. Xena had climbed the riggings herself a few times to see if anyone had pursued them from the harbor. No one came. Xena imagined a man like Gurkhan had more enemies than friends. And his power was in gold and ruthlessness, not in political alliances. The city would be in turmoil now over who got a share of the spoils.

            Xena did not care about the outcome, so long as the women and the slave girls of the harem were not among them. She had nearly broken Virgil's heart when she took his 220 gold dockets away. She left him with one, simply to soften the blow. Most of the slave girls still had families, kin in that region. Xena divided up the spoils among them and helped them to form a plan. Sarah seemed to know the deepest secrets of every nobleman and merchant in the city, and she helped them make alliances that could be trusted or else trusted in as much as they could be bought. They banded together most in groups of three at least, so Xena was not worried for them. What they had left behind them no longer concerned her.

            Gabrielle must have read the truthfulness in Xena's expression now. She drank the mixture from the same cup that had deceived her before. She went down to the same bed she had slept on before and sat the cup down on ground at the edge of it. She sat then lay back on the bed and put her arms behind her head.

            "Trick me again, and there will be consequences," Gabrielle said lightly. Xena smiled. She came and sat beside Gabrielle on the bed. Gabrielle touched the back of her hand, and Xena lifted it to allow their fingers to entwine.

            "Unlike this last time," Xena joked. She looked at their hands as she spoke. They did not have to hide their relationship any longer. She did not care if the women saw them now. Might be good for some of them, actually, she thought. The ones who seemed unable to believe in love between women, probably in any love at all.

            "Will you stay?" Gabrielle said in a soft voice.

            "Yes," Xena answered, just as gently. She ran her hand over Gabrielle's arm. Her skin was still soft from linseed oils, and it seemed slightly pale to Xena after so many days out of the sun. She let her fingertips move over the curves of the muscles where they met in her shoulder joint and touched her collarbones. Gabrielle lay silent with her eyes closed, as she did.

            "I didn’t know if we would make it this time," Gabrielle said.

            "I never know," Xena said. Gabrielle gave the softest smile. She opened her eyes.

            "I don't just mean alive," Gabrielle said. She took Xena's hand again. A look of pain flickered across Xena's face despite herself. She could see the potion dragging Gabrielle down into sleep. She touched her other arm.

            "You couldn't _throw_ me out at this point," Xene said. "I'd follow you around like a starving dog you fed in the streets." Gabrielle laughed softly.

           

            Xena spent the better part of the evening helping to get the others fed. Some of them were sick, and all of them dismayed or else exhilarated. Eve had already helped nearly half of them make plans to find kin or establish themselves someplace. They would need money. Xena knew she could get it for them once they were back in Greece. There were benefits to being owed favors by royalty, politicians, and merchants all over the countryside, and she wouldn't mind fleecing a warlord instead if one were handy when they landed.

            She went to talk with Sarah. Sarah sat alone near the prow of the ship looking out towards their destination. Xena wondered if she could remember home or not, it had been so long. She put her hand on her should, as she came in to sit beside her.

            "Eve has told you a little about us?" Xena asked.

            "To put me at ease," Sarah said. "I am amazed with you, Xena."

            "Because my friends still love me after all I've done?" Xena said, as she cocked an eyebrow.

            "Because you knew how to lay a trap for Gurkhan. You knew what bait he would take," Sarah said.

            "I did at that," Xena said.

            "Were you like him once?" Sarah asked.

            "Not quite," Xena said. "But not far off either. I know his type. Though they're usually not quite so smart."

            "He's all I know," Sarah said. Xena felt an usually maternal instinct and reached out to touch Sarah's hair. She seemed almost a wild animal, one just learning not to assume a threat in every touch.

            "And now he's dead, just like any other man," Xena said. "It doesn't matter if you hated it and enjoyed it both. None of this was your choice. It defines you far less than things I've done."

            "I won't fit in to the world again," Sarah said.

            "Probably not," Xena agreed. "But you can still find a place, I promise. Can you remember your mother?"

            "Yes, I remember her," Sarah said. "She's a kind woman. Nothing like me."

            "That's exactly how I used to feel about Gabrielle. Some of it rubs off eventually," Xena said. "At least a little." Sarah laughed, despite herself.

            Xena heard Gabrielle's voice from over her shoulder. She turned to see her awake and standing on the far end of the ship. She put her hand on Sarah's shoulder.

            "Just learn to follow the lead of kind women as faithfully as you followed his," Xena said. "They'll lead you to far better places in no time."

            Gabrielle touched Xena's arm as she passed, a glancing touch like those they had shared in the weeks before. She went to Sarah. Xena checked in with the night watch. Most of the women had gone below to try to sleep. A few were asleep on the deck, laid out all together. She smiled at the sight of them.

            Xena went to lay down in the place where Gabrielle had been asleep before. She could feel the faint heat from her body still in the blankets. She stretched her own body out and tested to feel if her injuries remained. A hard twist produced a faint pain deep in her back below her ribs. That was all that was left. Some of the other women were even better off than she was. Some of the others would need years to heal. And some, like Sarah, would need a lifetime. Things would change, though. Xena thought over them as she drifted off to sleep.

 

            Xena awoke as the curtains surrounding the place she slept were opened. She caught a faint sight of the moon and an outline that was distinctly Gabrielle's. A flicker of worry rose up in her chest, but she could feel right away from how Gabrielle moved that the ship was still at peace. The curtain closed behind her, and it was dark again.

            Gabrielle had come for her. She felt for Xena's body, as she sat herself on the edge of the narrow bed. Xena touched her hands and felt her own fingertips tremble. Gabrielle was silent and still for a moment. Then she felt along the outline of Xena's body in the darkness and leaned in to kiss her.

            Xena had not felt Gabrielle's lips upon her own since the night before they had come to Potedia. That was many weeks ago now. The feel of their kiss was like a current revelation more than a memory. Xena felt her whole body fill with a heat of both love and passion, as if it were a substance poured into her from some great storage jar. She felt herself tremble fully now. She knew it was for her desire as much as a fear she had ignored for days on end now. She had been afraid this would destroy the two of them, however much they had survived together in the past. Gabrielle was right. They might not have made it through this, or not entirely.

            Xena heard more than saw Gabrielle move in the darkness. Yet she could tell right away the she began to remove her own clothes. Xena sat up slowly. Gabrielle meant to make love to her right here. She felt her own heart beating hard at the thought of Gabrielle's body being exposed beside her in the dark. They would have to keep quiet, so as not to awaken the others, still asleep on the open deck. There were faint sounds from the wood of the ship ever settling into itself, the sails as they shifted in the movement of the wind, and always the rush of the sea against the boat as it slipped along the surface and through the waves. These made a thin shelter like the fabric of the curtain that created the walls of this room.

            She reached to touch Gabrielle's skin. She felt how Gabrielle's heart also beat hard in her chest. Xena drew her close to kiss her. She held her face in her hands, feeling its outline. She knew Gabrielle so well, she could infer how she felt from the subtle qualities of her movement. Their first kisses were gentle and moved slow and deep, as if to first reform the bond between them.

            "Forgive me," Xena said very softly, as she held her mouth near to her ear. Gabrielle's hand came to her face and turned her to kiss her hard. She moved her fingertips over Xena's face, as she did, to feel the shape of it. Gabrielle wanted no apologies. She merely wanted Xena, for them to be free and together again. She would not have had the words to say this even if they could speak openly, but she did not need to use any words.

            They kissed again and again, and soon they were holding one another close. For a time, their kisses grew almost desperate. They held one another hard, almost fiercely. They were reclaiming themselves, Xena felt, from the lie they had been caught up in for so long. Then they grew gentler, and they found a rhythm between them that they used to find easily. Their kisses went on and on. All other thought felt lost.

            Xena at last realized that she could no longer decipher how much time had passed. It might have been an hour or three, she could not tell. She glanced to see that light of morning was not yet coming through the curtains. She felt amazed to find she had almost forgotten where they were, the circumstances.

            By this coming together, they were laying claim fully to who they were, to what they wanted once more. No one could come between them now. Gabrielle must have held something like the same thoughts. Her hands trembled as she held Xena's face.

            "Xena," Gabrielle whispered, her mouth held close to Xena's own. Xena felt her own eyes close, even in the dark, and she thought of how it sent a pang through her body each time when Gabrielle whispered her true name to her in the weeks before this. She felt a pain like to it in her chest, remembering.

            Gabrielle placed her own hands over Xena's. She let them follow the line of her arms, and she started to unwrap the white fabric that she still wore. She gave the softest breath of a laugh. She moved in close to Xena's ear and spoke very softly.

            "A warrior dressed in fine white muslin," she said. "Seems a strange wrapping for such a gift."

            Xena felt herself smile, as Gabrielle touched Xena's face to feel it. She knew that Gabrielle would have smiled in response. Gabrielle wanted to lighten the mood, to bring back the ease that existed between them. She let her lips kiss softly down the line of Xena's neck across her shoulder. Their hands met in the dark. Xena drew Gabriell's hands to her lips and kissed them, then held them to her own face a moment. She took a deep breath and sat herself back and braced herself on her arms.  

            Xena shifted and lay down upon the bed, then she led Gabrielle as she came over her. She felt Gabrielle's hands braced upon her own stomach and felt as she carefully brought one knee across to the other side of her. Xena allowed her hands to run up along Gabrielle's thighs. They were too strong to shiver, else they would have, Xena felt.

            She leaned up to draw herself closer, and Gabrielle slid her hands up her body to rest along the line of Xena's jaw and kissed her. They settled down after a time, and after a while, they moved so Gabrielle's body stretched along Xena's. Xena let her hands move over the length of her body in the dark and felt her familiar shape. She almost marveled to feel her so unchanged by their ordeal. Yet her body held precisely the same postures and trembled in the same way as it had before, moved by the force of her own desire from within. Xena touched her to call it out.

            The movement of the ship aided her, as it rocked them into one another again and again. Xena felt that she could not have Gabrielle close enough this night. For too long, it felt, they had been kept apart. Gabrielle kissed her hard and so deeply that Xena felt herself almost unable to remain silent and avoid giving a sound of pleasure that built deep in her own chest. She kept her mouth pressed to Gabrielle, to her lips, her shoulders, her throat, in order to remain quiet.

            Gabrielle kissed Xena's shoulders in response. She reached up to tip her head back so that she could kiss her throat. Xena felt her tongue move slowly along the hollow at the base of her throat, and she felt her own breath stop for a moment, as the heat it caused spilled through her. Gabrielle kissed her lips again and brought her hands suddenly to hold Xena's breasts. Xena felt her back arch in response, as she forced herself to remain quiet. She had to draw in a deep breath and hold it.

            Gabrielle moved down after only a moment to kiss Xena's breasts. She kept her touch very gentle at first. Xena felt her hands move along her thighs and knew what she intended before she felt the touch come between her legs. She thought she would not possibly be able to remain silent and shuddered at her own restraint. She gave the lightest moan despite herself.

            Gabrielle came back to kiss her and kept her fixed in a set of kisses that did not end. This helped her to remain silent, as Gabrielle began the gentlest movement, in and out of her body. Gabrielle grew nearly still in her focus, as she kept Xena poised on the edge of what sensations she could take and still refrain from crying out. She would bring her hand up to touch her gently until she began to shiver from it, then touch her inside again until her back bowed at the feel of it.

            As she felt the movement of the sea and their bodies, Xena felt herself carried through the night, as if she were no longer standing as a subject of her own will but instead gave herself up. She felt that she must let herself yield entirely in order to merely remain silent. She drew her breath deeply and carefully.

            Xena did not know how to build to a climax in silence. At first, she thought she might go mad with it. She drew Gabrielle close, and Gabrielle kissed her more deeply. The feel of her mouth on her own kept her steady. When a shudder built inside her that she could not hold at bay, Xena arched into Gabrielle. Gabrielle held her hard, until Xena's shuddering settled and she lay back again.

            Xena felt these shudders continue to rise and move through herself and felt astonished. Her body seemed willing to take any amount, any quality of touch on this night. She felt that her body merely wanted Gabrielle, any way it could have her. She felt like land after a prolonged drought, as it absorbs the first, gentle storms during the coming of spring that might begin to break its thirst.

            Gabrielle's touch became softer upon her. She ran her hands over Xena's body, as if drawing its shape in the dark. She kissed Xena's body again, and she moved over her carefully. Xena merely lay quiet and felt each touch vividly as it came over her.

            Xena felt Gabrielle's fingers touch the precise place where one of her ribs had been broken in the weeks before. The rain of blows from the circle of guards had fallen on her too quickly, and she could not hold herself tense while appearing to submit without taking a few hits unprepared. A club's strike broke her rib, and she shifted at once to force it into place as best she could. The blows that fell on it after nearly rendered her unconscious and made it a struggle to breath. The guards tired themselves out soon after, and she was kept herself from going under.

            As Gabrielle's fingertips pressed into her skin to feel the place where the bone was knitted together, Xena let her fingers tangle into Gabrielle's hair. She felt Gabrielle's hand move over her skin until she touched the precise place over her eye where she had been cut. She suspected a guard's ring opened the cut. She could faintly distinguish the shape of the scar under Gabrielle's thumb as it ran back and forth along the line of it.

            Xena felt aware now, for some strange reason, just how young she had been when she had last taken such a beating. There had not been many, and she could have fought her way out of this one even at the end. She recalled being beaten into the ground by her own army. She thought then that if she lived, she would kill them all. Over the next few years, she had killed nearly all of them.

            All she could think this time, as the guards beat her and left her to suffer, was of rising up again from this cruel cell to take Gabrielle with Sarah out of such a place that offered such torment. She never felt much of anything about the guards. They were not men in her estimation, but merely instruments.

            Gabrielle seemed deep in thought herself, as she moved over Xena's body. Her intention felt clearly expressed, even through the silence surrounding them. She meant to touch Xena, with the nearly infinite tenderness her touch could carry, as many times as she had been struck. Xena lay nearly still, her hands moving along the shape of Gabrielle's body almost of their own will.

            Xena felt that as Gabrielle's touch gradually grew softer and less seeking, her body began to tremble again, faintly this time. She felt her own jaw grasp, as this was the moment when she would have turned her over and come on top of her in the past. A pain of vivid anxiety broke out in Xena's chest that took her by surprise.

            Xena sat them both up. She held Gabrielle's face in her hands in the dark. She kissed her, as she felt her own breath waver there in the darkness. She felt afraid now to touch Gabrielle, a rare feeling, like being set against herself.

            A flash of memory came vividly into her mind. She felt an echo of the pain that streaked through her body when Gabrielle arrived at the palace. Xena had meant to shut her out of this mission and bring Sarah home herself. She knew she would have to leave a trail of deceit and destruction in her wake. And she knew she would hardly care. Once she decided on an enemy, on a purpose, she would be unflinching in her resolve. She studied the culture and the order of the palace, and she made a map of her enemy in her mind as she did. She knew she would find her way to the heart of all this, seek out the most intimate and unguarded place of cruelty and sadistic delight in her enemy's heart, and by the very mastery he held, she would unmake him.

            Then Gabrielle entered the palace, and Xena felt a rush of conflict disrupt all her plans. She had been far away from herself and lost in it. She had to stare at the ground, as she knew anyone could read her emotions, as they played out vividly upon her face. Fortunately, Virgil's banter drew all the attention in the room. When he spoke of Gabrielle's body, offering her as an exotic creature, less than a person, a rare source of sexual delight for the master of the palace, Xena knew it would work. She felt her skin crawl as it had not before. Her heart filled with the deepest anger, towards everyone involved. She closed her eyes a moment as a real memory of the pleasure of knowing Gabrielle's body came through her mind. She had drawn the most intimate and sacred part of her life into this place, where desire was perverted with power and please came from well-crafted torments as much as pleasures. The reality took a long moment to settle in upon her, as she regained her own mastery of the situation and resolve.

            She studied Gabrielle's movements during the dance only to trace the affect they had on the one they were designed to deceive. She saw already that she could bring her into the forming plan in her mind. Now free of that place and together in the dark, Xena remembered how easy it was to see Gabrielle through such a man's eyes and once again lay the foundation and reshape her own web of deception to ensnare him. She felt only now, far away from the danger they had faced, the terror of such a vision. She tried to touch Gabrielle, but she felt herself all wrong. It seemed that she did not know herself.

            Xena felt Gabrielle had grown quite still. Even in the dark, she could feel the strange mood that had come over Xena. Xena could tell from her searching touch that she wondered if she were in pain in some way, then she seemed to catch some indication of what was happening. She moved into Xena's lap and brought her legs around her. She kissed her, as if trying to draw her back.

            The position was so familiar, it distracted Xena for a moment. This was precisely what Gabrielle had intended. She felt Gabrielle's hands press into her hair, and she ran her fingers down through the length of it, as she softly pulled. When she finished, she scratched up her back, slowly, with gentle and steady pressure. All these gestures brought Xena back to this moment and rooted her body in the shared history of their own relationship. All of this brought her back to a hundred memories Gabrielle.

            Gabrielle put her hand in the small of Xena's back and pressed into her. Xena's back bowed, and desire flared up through her body. As Gabrielle openly seduced Xena to take her, Xena's mind cleared away a fog of confusion from the past weeks. Xena could feel now that Gabrielle did not share her experience. She never lived in a confusion over sex and power during her own life, which meant she had never experience this with Xena. The rare times they found themselves taxed to the point of rivalry, the passion between them died immediately, as a response.

            Xena wondered how this could remain true if Gabrielle could have followed her to the palace. She knew that selling herself would never have been a part of her own plan, so she must have followed what she knew of Xena's plan in her mind. Yet, Xena realized, she never would have drawn Sarah out, moved herself in close to Gurkhan, or set his own guards upon him. The path she followed was not the same. Xena was alone, she realized, in suffering with the ghosts her past. She had feared, terribly, that somehow she had drawn them into Gabrielle's life, brought her into a world where power and manipulation ruled over everything else and all of life grew entangled in a web of violence, unpredictable and indiscriminate. She feared she had drawn them both into the hell of her own life before, as a younger woman.

            And she could feel now, as Gabrielle tried to show her, that Gabrielle was kept quite separate from all of this. She was drawing Xena back to the present and to herself now. So Xena followed her now on this return journey, just as Gabrielle had followed her there. Only this was an act of their own will. Nothing in the world forced them to it. And Xena would immerse herself far more in this world, the one they shared, than Gabrielle had in the tangle of desires and wills of the weeks before.

            As they kissed, Xena felt herself more present. She became aware of the movement of the ship again, and she began to kiss Gabrielle in earnest. Xena felt her body yield at once, and Xena held her up and almost hard. She drew her close to her own body and felt more than heard a groan of longing deep in Gabrielle's chest.

            Xena pressed her hands into her. She ran them over her whole body, until she felt Gabrielle lift up slightly and start to tremble. Xena pressed her to the borders of what she could tolerate, here in the quiet, and felt Gabrielle's body held tensed in response. Gabrielle gripped Xena's wrists. She wanted to bring Xena's hand to touch her, Xena knew. She tried to wait instead.

            Xena shifted her thigh between Gabrielle legs and bent her knee. She lifted Gabrielle up and drew her to herself as she did to kiss her breasts. She ran her hands along her sides, then brought them up over her breasts. She settled with one hand on her chest and one in the small of her back, guiding her along in her movement.

            Gabrielle's breath stopped Xena could feel. She started breathing again slowly, in faint gasps at first. Xena heard the softest sounds that she held in as best she could and brought her own ear in close to her throat to hear them. The delicate sounds seemed amplified in the dark, as she focused, and seemed to overwhelm all Xena's senses for a time.

            When at last Gabrielle seemed desperate for Xena's hands upon her, Xena turned her around in the bed. She drew Gabrielle back into her lap, and she brought one hand between her legs. She touched her breasts with the other at first. Then she reached from behind to touch her with both hands. She kept her movements slow and gentle as she could, except that she pressed in hard to reach as deep as she could.

            Gabrielle reached back to grasp her neck, and Xena kissed her shoulder and then bit it softly. She felt Gabrielle's back bow and knew she stopped her breath to remain quiet. She kissed along her neck, and finally Gabrielle turned so they could kiss again. Xena kissed her deeply, as she turned her body slightly to the side. She kept her hands moving in a steady rhythm that matched now the motion made by the sea.

            To Xena's astonishment, Gabrielle seemed to settle into this. She seemed able to take the deepest sensations into her with her breath, which she brought into rhythm with Xena's movements. She kept herself from tensing, so she could accept the pleasure she received and remain still. She held Xena and arched into her. She turned Xena's face to kiss her, then kissed the side of Xena's neck and rested her mouth there a moment. Xena felt Gabrielle's breath coming in soft rushes of air against herself. She closed her eyes at the feel of it and grew totally lost in the feel of her in the darkness.

            When Gabrielle moved at last to get Xena to lay her down, Xena practically lifted her up to shift them over and bring her down into the bed. She moved overtop of her and pressed her thigh into Gabrielle. Gabrielle held her hard and close right at once. They found a rhythm again and kissed more freely now.

            Gabrielle's back arched at last, and Xena felt from how her body began to clench that she drew closer to being overcome. Xena put one hand in the small of her back to lift her up, as Gabrielle gripped her shoulders. She felt her begin to shudder, and it built until she shook dramatically. The release her body needed seemed to come through her trembling, since she could not cry out. And Xena felt her pleasure come to its height and dip before coming back up again.

            Xena let her forehead rest against Gabrielle's chest. She felt Gabrielle's hands gripped carefully in her hair. She kept on until the last waves of pleasure seemed to draw themselves out. Then she let Gabrielle down onto the bed and moved to embrace her. Gabrielle drew her close to kiss her and wrap her arms around her in response.

            They kissed until Xena again thought to wonder how long they had been together like this. When they touched each other this way, she lost track of everything else, lost her sense of the passing of time. She turned to see the faintest light of morning just beginning to come through the curtain.

            Gabrielle turned to bring herself tight against the wall and helped Xena to settle in beside her. They had to keep their arms about one another to both remain on the bed. Xena felt Gabrielle sigh deeply. Xena smiled, as she knew what Gabrielle was thinking. She was wondering how long it would be before they could come together this way again. They would reach port just as night fell. The coming days would be filled with finding a place where so many could stay and finding them ways and means to go where they wanted. Then they would take Sarah to Potedia, to Lila. Gabrielle would be loath to leave right away, and Xena would not press her on from there before she felt ready.

            This life that they shared as lovers remained subject to continuous disruption, and yet Xena knew that she would hardly feel their distance. The time that passed always left them closer, as even this ordeal had in the end. For now, Xena focused entirely on this one moment, on Gabrielle's body against her own, her hands holding her close, and the sound of her breath. Xena felt more at peace now than she had for so long that her body felt slightly stunned as the feel of it settled into her. She felt amazed at how fast it could shed the memory of suffering. She hoped the others would find the same healing, and her mind began already to sort through all the places she might lead them in order for them somewhere to belong. Unlike them, she was already returned home.


End file.
